Use expense types to define the classifications of travel tracked at your company. Expense types commonly include categories such as Airfare, Lodging, Ground Transportation, Per Diem, and Rental Car, Unallowable Travel, and Employee Receivables. For each expense type, as applicable, assign an appropriate travel account group code, a default ceiling-applied code, a ceiling amount, start and end dates, and optionally a rate per unit.
You must also identify at the time of initialization whether or not an expense type is to be used to record meals, lodging, or relocation. It is imperative that expense types that are used to record Meals & Incidental Expenses (M&IE) or lodging be earmarked as such so that per diem ceiling calculations are properly invoked. You can initialize an expense type as an M&IE or lodging expense, but not both. Once this decision has been made, you are unable to change this information. If an expense type is improperly overlooked as an M&IE or lodging expense, it must be deleted and added back into the system in order to make the necessary correction.
Set up expense types in this screen as one of the first steps in the initialization process. The expense type is a required field for each line of data entered in the following screens: Vendor Travel Info, Enter Expense Reports and Enter Company Paid Expenses.
Expense type data is also used by the Match Company-Paid Expense routine (the Match Company Paid Expenses screen) and in the calculation of over-ceiling amounts against the Joint Travel Regulations (JTR).
In the Maintain Travel Account Groups screen, you set up codes to represent default account/organization/project/ref1/ref2 combinations for four types of transaction accounts:
Expense Rpt Default, Company Paid, Over Ceiling, and Third Party Paid.
Use the Link To Travel Account Group subtask of this screen to link one or more travel account groups to each expense type you set up. Travel account groups are linked based on a date range. By linking a travel account group to the expense type, you define the default accounts that will be available on the expense report for four different types of transactions. (Note that you cannot set up all four transaction types for a given travel account group.) The account combinations mapped to the different transaction types are used as follows:
An Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination that is mapped to an Expense Rpt Default transaction type will supply the default Account/Organization/Project/ Ref1/Ref2 combination that is automatically charged in the Enter Expense Reports screen.
An Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination that is mapped to a Company Paid transaction type will supply the default Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination that is credited for the company-paid portion of the employee's travel. This step is necessary in order to reduce the amount reimbursed to the employee as well as to allow for the entry that will be recorded in the General Ledger. This credit entry is added to the Expense Report as part of the voucher creation/posting process.
An Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination that is mapped to an Over Ceiling transaction type will supply the default Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination to be charged for amounts in excess of a per diem or company ceiling, which are usually charged to an unallowable or employee receivable account. Over-ceiling amounts are calculated in the Enter Expense Reports screen at the time of data entry.
An Account/Organization/Project/Ref1/Ref2 combination that is mapped to a Third Party Paid transaction type will supply the default Account/Organization/Project/ Ref1/Ref2 combination to be credited for expenses paid by third parties. This step is necessary in order to reduce the amount reimbursed to the employee as well as to allow for the entry that will be recorded in the General Ledger.
The association of expense types with travel records can be very useful when performing online queries, running standard reports, or designing custom reports using Impromptu. Expense Type is frequently one of the selection criteria by which you can choose specialized segments from your database records. As a result of its importance as a record limiter, we strongly recommend that you set up meaningful travel expense types for association with your travel records.
If you do not wish to use expense types for this purpose, and you do not need to enforce per diem ceilings, you will still need to set up at least one general travel expense type for use with all travel, such as DEF, GEN, 000000, and so on. If you need to use per diem ceiling calculations, you need a minimum of three different general travel expense types: one for meal expenses; one for lodging expenses; and one for expenses that are neither meals nor lodging. We recommend that you establish multiple expense types, based on your company's requirements. This will enable you to maximize the effectiveness of the automatic Match Company-Paid Expense routine (Match Company Paid Expenses screen), because this process matches company-paid expenses based on expense types.
Before you enter expense types in this screen, first establish travel account group codes in the Maintain Travel Account Groups screen. Set up expense types in this screen as one of the first steps in the initialization process, before you begin to add expense report, company-paid expense, or vendor travel data.
Although you can add to, delete, or change the information in this screen at any time, use caution in the timing of your edits, because they can affect the types of records included in system reports.
Enter up to six alphanumeric characters in this required field to establish an expense type. The types that you establish for use with your travel records should be specific to your company's requirements. There is no limit to the number of travel expense types that can be set up in this screen. For example, you might set up an expense type of AIR for airfare, GT for ground transportation, and so on.
Enter up to 30 alphanumeric characters in this required field to provide the description for the expense type code. Although entering only a single character in this field fulfills the system requirement for a description, you will find it more beneficial to supply a meaningful description, because your entry will display when using the Lookup function on expense types and in reports that utilize this field.
Click this button to open the Link to Travel Account Group subtask, where you can assign a travel account group and a ceiling applied code to the selected expense type, and indicate whether or not the expense type is a meals expense, a lodging expense, or a relocation expense.